It's Here-- The Giant Spider!

This week sees the world premiere of Christopher Mihm's latest independent film, The Giant Spider. As many of you know, Chris (Captain Euphoria on TrekBBS) has been producing homages to old Drive-In B-Movies for several years now, at the rate of about one a year. He's had quite a bit of success with them, as they routinely win awards and are shown at conventions and film festivals around (and occasionally outside) the country.

This year I get to attend the premiere in person for the first time. As a bonus, Chris has invited me to be a guest on his pre-premiere podcast, which will be recorded tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to it, since his podcasts are always a blast.

That's pretty much the idea. The elements of awfulness from the old drive-in B-movies are the DNA of Chris's films, like the palette of colors a painter may use.

Are these films available for rent from anywhere, like i-tunes type thing?

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Not to my knowledge. As far as I know, you can only see them on DVD, or if they happen to be shown at a film festival near you. Or if Dr Cryptosis is on a local channel, because he has shown some of them.

Oh hey, I just found one of your reviews on his site RJ.

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Yeah, Chris loved my "home-made" cookies analogy.

Well, I'm back and I had a great time. The podcast was a lot of fun and was more than I expected. When my cab arrived, I was ambushed by a guy with a camera, which I assumed was one of Chris's friends fooling around (they do that )-- but it turned out the podcast was being covered by the local ABC affiliate. They interviewed Chris and myself and a couple of other out-of-towners who were there for the podcast, and they filmed part of the podcast. The TV guys were real nice. I got to make my "support independent creators" speech. I don't know if or when any of it showed up on TV (I tend to doubt it did-- the next day there was a horrible accident in St. Paul in which two kids were killed-- I'm sure they didn't have time to bother with human interest fillers).

I got to meet not only Chris, but his wife and his friends Rhuby and Haider, who host the podcast and who participate in the movies (on-screen and behind the scenes). Very warm and hospitable people; I felt right at home from the moment I appeared in the driveway. I also got to meet several of the actors briefly, and one of the actors, Dan Sjerven (veteran of several of Chris's movies) not so briefly. He gave me a lift back to Minneapolis to save me cab fare because I was "a guest in his city." He was a real sweetheart. Pretty much the first thing he said when we met was to ask about the Marathon bombing.

Seeing the movie, The Giant Spider, on the big screen in an old-fashioned theater was fantastic. The place was packed; some of the women dressed up in period gowns and such. I got just about everybody's autograph-- not the spider, though, who was played mostly by Chris's son's pet tarantula.

And, of course, the movie was a hoot. As usual, it was set in the same universe as the others and several of the characters are carry-overs from previous films (e.g., General Castle from House of Ghosts). In fact, this one could almost be considered a direct sequel to Terror From Beneath The Earth, considering the origin of the jumbo arachnid-- which helped to get us straight into the monster action. The plot this time involves a local reporter who has just asked his fiancee to marry him-- and is interrupted to cover the giant spider story. When the army fails to stop the monster, Dr Edwards (seen previously in Terror) and his colleagues come up with a plan for the reporter to risk his life to save the town. Is that final scene in the church a wedding or a funeral? As always, the humor and B-Movie imagery (the giant spider attacking a drive-in theater is a classic), is there to serve a genuine story about believable and likeable characters. As I've said in the past, the thing that really makes Chris's films work is the sincerity-- these are loving homages, not parodies, and the characters are always of central importance. So if you like those old movies and wish there were more of them-- buy this. Just as Steampunk evolved from a desire to see more work in the vein of Verne and Wells, Chris has genetically engineered a genre built from the DNA of old-school drive-in movies.

I missed doing the podcast, as I wasn't able to make it to MN til Wednesday. I hear you guys had fun, though.

As always, the premiere was a blast. LOVED the call-back to a rather popular set of characters from the first two movies. I also took home the set of cards featuring the call-backs, and the flashlight Cookie used in the previous movie, House of Ghosts.

I wish I had known you were going to be there. Next time, seek me out. I'm always there.